Dying Man's Tin
by LithiumDoll
Summary: All the wives beg – beg, tease, snipe and flatter – because words are their weapons. They wield them like a War Boy's lance and they aim for the weakest point.
1. Prologue

"Please," Angharad begs. "Take us with you."

All the wives beg – beg, tease, snipe and flatter – because words are their weapons. They wield them like a War Boy's lance and they aim for the weakest point.

Immortan Joe's weak in the pride and that's the only reason Furiosa is standing in the vault now, scrapings from the old world bundled on her back for his brides to coo over: he thinks there's no way, no possible way, that his property could be stolen.

Or run off on sandhoney-smooth legs all on its own.

Without bothering to reply – they've given her no reason to spill words – she pries the straps from her shoulders and holds out the bag.

Toast snatches at it with a hunger. Usually she's nose deep into the books before Furiosa's even made it to the door, but with a glance to Capable and under the unblinking stare of The Dag, she lets her shinies fall.

They're not about to be distracted, Furiosa notes, grudgingly interested. Not about to be bought. Despite herself she's engaged; knows she's been foolish enough to let it show when The First takes aim again.

"Please," Angharad repeats, gaze level, but soft. No challenge. None needed. Always so steady: so sure, so brave. Even as a little thing. The Splendid Angharad.

The other wives say nothing; she speaks for them. Her unborn is their shield, and in the trailing silence her unspoken "this time" finds its way to Furiosa's throat and snaps taut as a garrote.

She swallows; nods to acknowledge the hit. 'Respect the weapon,' her mother said, six thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine days ago. 'Whatever it is.'

"All of you?" Her voice is a rasp compared to Angharad's: road choked. The vault means full life, but the road means alive and she lives a little further every day.

Angharad's hand rests lightly on the swell of her belly. "All of us."

"You have no idea what it's like out there."

"We'll learn," Capable says confidently.

"We're not useless," Toast adds. "We can take care of ourselves."

Her chest aches. "Ready to kill? To die?"

"We won't kill," Angharad says firmly; Toast and Capable murmur their agreement. "No one has to get hurt. We have a plan. It's a good plan," she forges on quickly. "When Joe makes the Aqua fall, everyone will be too busy to pay attention to us. We'll sneak onto the War Rig and ride with you."

"To Gas Town?"

"No, not that far. You can just stop and let us out and –"

"Bury what's left of your bones on the run back."

Cheedo gnaws nervously at her lip, gaze darting from face to face.

"What happens to us isn't your problem," Capable says. "Just get us out of the Citadel."

The wives beg – beg, tease, snipe and flatter – because they don't know they've never had to beg anything of Furiosa. Because they don't know how much she owes them.

She makes no apology for her ambition: to raise herself high in Joe's esteem, become so trusted that he bestow on her the wheel of the War Rig and her one, great gleaming shot at the green place.

'Survive,' her mother said, six thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six days ago. 'Promise me.'

She makes no apology for what her ambition cost, but the wives are part of the price she paid and she feels the weight of it.

"I eye one little spy," The Dag mutters, and raises a finger to point. "Miss Giddy rises."

Skin tattooed with ink and time and memory; all full of history. Miss Giddy stands in the arch of the bedding rooms and looks square. Her lips tighten as if she knows what Furiosa did, but they don't leak secrets.

"Take them," is all she says. "Get the hell out."

She won't see the green place again. Furiosa knows it in metal and bone, but trying had to mean something. Had to.

A flock of brides won't increase her chances, but something like, very like hope begins to wind an unfamiliar path around her ribs.

"Tomorrow," Furiosa agrees. "When the Aqua falls."


	2. Chapter 1

No one knows how much water the Citadel holds.

Used to be, Miss Giddy would tell about endless cubix - whatever that was. Say the source was wide as Katie Tandy. Whoever that was. Hands weaving the story, she'd tell how the rock drank what the wasters didn't. Drank it in and drank it down, made it pure and then rushed it back.

'Word burger,' Miss Giddy would say. 'Aqua Fur.'

'Through the will of the Immortan, of course,' she'd add on the sly, after a tick too long. 'Through the Immortan's will.'

The clusters of pups she gave the history never noticed, their attention caught by every word and lost with every pause. Piles of eager, bright-eyed skin and bones, already white with the ashes the Immortan swore they'd rise from.

One of them had been Nux, once. Maybe. Probably.

He'd risen.

Furiosa doesn't know cubix, or Katie Tandy, or Aqua Fur from Aqua Cola, but she knows this: while the milking mothers want it, the water will fall. They'll take a hooked-up half-life over an empty full-life and she doesn't blame them.

"Imperator meant Emperor," Toast says, barely audible above the chants below. "In back times - long gone times. You're the only Imperator left."

All those half-burned books Joe lined their cage with.

The horizon rises as they're lifted; she can see the black smoke oiling the sky. One by one the wives turn eyes to her. She feels the weight of their regard - soft but heavy, like the deceptively thick cloth of the bride whites. It lasts years.

They're waiting. The last Vuvalini too: Scarf-wrapped Verdandi, tired memory supplies. And Kalma, goggles over her head.

Furiosa finds it a strange thing: there was a blade in her side and her lung bags went, but it's her shoulders that ache. Her throat.

"No," she rasps, one good eye still on the space where he was: the one mad enough to walk away from the water. "You earned this place. You and them." She looks up at last, cranes her neck to see the mothers, the pups, the winch-walkers.

"But they know the Imperator," Capable says flatly. "They trust strength, not - not Joe's baubles. Not the mothers. Not even themselves. And they're right to be wary. Give us time to show them strength. One year. Please."

She's given everything; the Citadel has always known how to milk more.

"A year," she agrees, when they reach the heights.

-o-

She sleeps, but the fever dreams.

Moon and sun; fire and water; blood and ashes. She takes comfort in their familiarity. It's the voices that make her jerk and gasp, awake but never aware.

Men and women; girls and boys; wings beating and the howls of the War Boys: an endless storm of noise and dust and lightning, and under it all the thunder of the War Rig.

Behind her there's the darkness and before her there's a red, red road, twisting into the chaos. In the impossible distance a glimmer of green, which disappears every time she tries to fix on it. It won't be found, not by the undeserving.

Sometimes her hands are tight on the wheel, usually they aren't.

Sometimes she has no hands. Worse, sometimes she has no wheel.

She's dying.

She's not dying. She promised.

Can she hear us?

I don't think so.

I'll pinch her.

She smacks the fingers that touch her arm and smiles at an injured yelp.

The storm breaks.

She sleeps; she doesn't dream.

-o-

The wives didn't name themselves. Names are given, lost, earned, taken and ruined, but they're rarely chosen.

Capable is competent – that's true – but it's not the shape of her: she's capable of anything. Mostly of forgotten things:

Understanding. Forgiveness. Hope. Grief.

In the midst of the Citadel's rebirth, she does grieve. For Angharad and her babe, for the Many Mothers, and for the War Boys who died chrome, so sure of the gates of Valhalla.

For the War Boy who died free.

But she mourns with her hands and saves those she can: the wasters, Furiosa, even the War Boys the Fury Road spits back as the days trickle on. They come to her angry, cursing and screaming. The ones that leave are quiet and unsure and angry in new ways.

Bridal whites become bandages, stained red and black and yellow, but washed every day in the water that still falls.

And there are the botanicals. She reads the books for every scrap of knowing. What will cure and what will kill, but kindly.

Furiosa's fever breaks on the fourth day, her eyes open on the fifth. "Organic…?"

"Dead and gone." Capable ties a careful knot. "You're medicked, Toast reckons. Me and Cheedo – we've got it covered. She sees to the cutting, I see to the fixing. Little by little."

Furiosa's drifting again; she'll live.

-o-

The milking mothers turn off the water on the third day, though it shows no sign of stopping. Furiosa finds them on the sixth, hesitating at the entrance to the milking rooms they still claim.

Every machine is intact. All but two are in use by mothers. Veiled still, but cradling the living, not the dead.

"Our pick of the botanicals and control of the water," the mother by the window says as she turns. "For our milk. You need us, don't think you don't."

She's young, this mother - young and scared – but the women the Rig couldn't take rescued themselves and Furiosa wants nothing more than to give them what they want.

"No." She squares her shoulders and ignores that persistent ache. "You keep this place, you mother the babes. Any milk left we convoy. Whatever's traded, you get one third against fruits and vegetables.

"And when you're natural done, there'll be other work, not the dust."

The mother slowly nods. "Deal, then. And the water?"

Furiosa studies her. Maybe seventeen. Maybe eighteen. Dark skin and darker hair; gaze level, not cruel. "What's your name?"

"Kadee."

"Keep the water, Kadee," Furiosa says, and hopes she won't regret it. "And don't let anyone take it away."

-o-

Later, days later, when the sun's hit the high, Furiosa sits back against the sweating stone of the heights and closes her eyes. She doesn't open them, not even when she hears footsteps; anyone who wants to kill her in this heat, they're welcome to.

It's the heavy tread of a man. Steady enough, but uneven. The footsteps stop in front of her and whoever it is makes a soft sound: a question that never makes it into the mouth, let alone words.

She answers with a nod and draws her knees to her chest as Max drops gracelessly next to her, shuffling around until he's resting a shoulder against hers. The dust rises from his leathers and clogs in her throat; she turns her head to spit it away.

"Max," she says. Not a greeting exactly - he can probably use the reminder.

He hums a distracted-sounding agreement as he follows her gaze down to Angharad's Garden. It's small and chancy, carved in the dirt and far from the protected botanicals, but the green shoots are surviving. The Dag is a tiny thing, stabbing down again and again as she forces the rock away.

"Looks good."

She waits for more, but that seems to be it. He's more or less remembered the words now - she knows he can string them together well enough when he wants to - but neither of them have much to say.

She dozes. Perhaps he sleeps too; either way he doesn't move until the sun dips low.

When he stands she doesn't stop him and it's only when the rambling footsteps have faded that she opens her eyes. Next to her hand is a small twist of yellowed paper. When she carefully opens it, tiny seeds roll inside the folds.

She brings them to the Dag, whose eyes widen as she takes them with the due reverence of the Seed Keeper.

"Where did you get them?"

"Max."

The Dag nods; she doesn't really care, lost in the possibilities she holds in the palm of her hand.

The seasons turn; the Dag's belly swells and Angharad's splendor blooms.

-o-

It's their pattern as the days lengthen. He finds his way inside the Citadel, brings some token, sits in silence and leaves only after she speaks his name. At first she doesn't, when she realizes. Tries to engage him some other way, some better way.

But he won't be drawn out. Only wants this.

Just to be known.

"Max," she says now, as a greeting - right at the beginning, because she won't hold that over him.

She never thanks him for what he brings, never even thinks to. This is equal trade between them.

When she can, she works the garden, digs Toast's little rivers to precise direction and wonders exactly when Imperator became Emperor became Shovel-rider.

The sun beats across her shoulders until a shadow falls to take the heat. She knows who it is, there's no need to stop. "Max."

"Furiosa."

That does make her turn, curious - he's never spoken her name. She looks up, shielding her eyes from the sun.

He meets her eyes for a tick and then looks away, towards the creeping spread of tiny purple flowers. "They took."

"Where did you find them?"

He sees the heart of her question, answers that. "Nowhere green." When he holds his hand out, she takes the rag-wrapped bundle in it automatically. It's heavy.

"And this?"

"Mm." His gaze darts back. Away again. "Books. For Toast."

"Was it green where you found them?"

His lip twitches, amused. "Did you take?" he asks instead.

Did she? Has she? She hasn't given it much thought.

(She has. Her roots sink deeper every day and it will hurt to leave. But she will. She does not yet deserve to thrive.)

He nods at her silence, apparently in agreement with himself, and walks away, satisfied with whatever answer she didn't give.

-o-

Sun hours shorten, the night fires burn long and Cheedo's hands are blood slicked. She's very nearly as skilled at keeping bodies breathing as the Organic Mechanic was. Far more skilled at doing it without trading ticks now for years later.

She calls herself the Surgeon and stabs a War Boy who calls her Mechanic. Only in the arm, only a little. 'Make no harm,' she says, but thinks harm different than she did before.

Cheedo is fragile like black rock: break it and you will bleed.

The Dag's babe hangs low and that means it's a boy, the milking mothers say. They give her fruits, they give her their milk, they rub black oil into her skin, but her belly won't lift.

She claims she doesn't care; claims she knows the birth will kill her anyway.

Too narrow in the hips; blood too strong in her veins.

She won't let Capable's botanicals kill Joe's spawn, though, and they respect that. Instead she makes Toast recite the names of the seeds over and over and, finally, pins the first blue ink on Toast's skin just to be sure. Tiny letters circling her wrists, winding to her palms.

When her belly grows large, even the mothers say she won't live - even the Vuvalini.

Cheedo disagrees.

Wheels run the Fury Road ragged in every direction, guzzoline burning through night, day and storm as they scour the wastes for the old world's tools. The War Boys turn over buildings buried in sand and salt, mining down and down and down for anything that glints.

Furiosa stands outside the bridal suite, back pressed to the steel vault door. She's unwilling to enter and unable to leave, and the Dag's screams echo again and again along old, familiar paths.

Max finds her there and doesn't wait for a greeting, just shoves a dust-covered leather bag into her arms. It clatters inside as she takes it, metal on metal.

She runs.

-o-

They say the Dag won't live. Hips too narrow. Blood so strong.

They're wrong.

And the girl's your actual, viable human being. Perfect in every way.

In the first light of dawn, the Dag breathes 'Glory Be'; that's a name with as much shine on it as any.

-o-

This time when Max leaves, when the first piping wail rises, he's running. Furiosa chases what runs.

He's fast - stumbles often, skids often, but never falls. She hears his mumbled apologies to the people he slams into – to the walls too – and his breathless demands, words blurring together into a flood that comes too fast for sense.

She catches him at the heights, close to the edge – too close. With her hand she yanks him back from the void, with her body she holds him against the crumbling stone.

Corpus watches with wide eyes. That's his job; she ignores him.

"Max," she hisses, squeezing his arm tight enough to bruise. Bring him back.

He doesn't focus, but he frowns. Not angry, frustrated: scratching for words.

She waits.

"Not long enough," he explains, halfway reasonable tone at odds with the sensation that, if she'd just step aside, stop bearing down, those panting breaths would reel him over the edge.

She won't step aside.

"It should be, shouldn't it?" He asks, as if she'd know that kind of loss. As if he knows she does. "Should be. Long enough."

She raises her hand, the one made of flesh, and places it over his heart. Presses until she feels his breath stutter and, finally, begin to even. "Probably never will be."

"Mm," he agrees.

They can still hear the babe; life is always hungry.

He shudders again and tentatively straightens; she withdraws her hand. Withdraws her weight.

"Glory Be," he murmurs, and it sounds like goodbye.

Or maybe like a question.

"We'll see you again," she orders.

"Mm."

-o-

The Glory child rolls in the scrub, crooning to herself, gums chewing on mud-caked fingers. The Dag lives, but she's weak still and rests often, so Furiosa watches her child with half an eye while she digs and rakes.

"Rest," Cheedo says softly, but it's a command for all of that. Furiosa stiffens, because no one commands her. But she wanted this - she wanted eyes and minds and futures turned to them and not her.

She smirks at her own contrariness and leans on the shovel, pleased enough to see Cheedo looking uncertain when she turns. Good. No one should ever be sure. "Why? There's work to be done."

"Talk with me."

Furiosa repeats herself in the arch of an eyebrow and the cant of her head.

"I know it's been almost a year," Cheedo says. "But we're not ready."

"You're ready. You were ready the moment you crawled on your bellies. The rest is … the rest is just digging." She demonstrates with another hard scrape of the shovel.

"We don't want you to leave."

Furiosa shrugs. "Mm," she mimics, unthinking.

Cheedo's expression is so scandalized that Furiosa's laughing before she knows it, and then Cheedo's laughing with her and Glory Be giggles in the dust.

"Why would you go?" Cheedo asks as the laughter fades.

Because she's had a taste of being responsible for these lives and it's sour in her throat.

Because it's been months and she still mourns the Many Mothers and the green place that was dying even then.

Because she doesn't want to bear witness to this dream dying too.

Because a green place is still out there.

Because she does not yet deserve to stay.

"Because I can."

-o-

The contingent from The Bullet Farm is nervous, the contingent from Gas Town is eager.

It's their fourth visit in as many seasons.

The first time they came, Furiosa was still fevered. As Toast tells it, the two forces gathered at the foot of the Citadel and demanded entrance. Demanded restitution. Finally, after a week of threats and lies and poor rationing, they had demanded – and then begged for – water.

And had been freely given it.

That had been shock enough to send them scurrying back to their outposts as they tried to understand this new game.

The second time they came, Furiosa met them in Angharad's Garden with the wives and mothers at her side, the War Boys at her back and baskets of fruit overflowing on the talking table.

Negotiations had been tense, certainly – many useful lives were lost to Joe's family squabble, many irreplaceable resources wasted – but it was so very difficult to keep a grudge while licking the juice of an orange from your hands.

The third time they came, it was obvious they had come only to hash out their own differences in the comfort of the garden – and she allowed it, only stipulating that their weapons were left at its borders.

It had taken some time, and endless posturing, but they had agreed.

This time she doesn't have to ask.

And this time, she is not at the head of the table.

Toast raises her chin and ignores the confusion of the delegates. "The Citadel welcomes its brothers and sisters of the Bullet Farm and the Gas Town, and is pleased to offer its hospitality."

The contingent from The Bullet Farm nod, the contingent from Gas Town smile. All are biding their time, waiting for that first sign of weakness.

In the Citadel, they will find none.

Furiosa sits far at the back, where she can listen, but not be seen. It's no surprise when a leather pack drops at her side and the dust rises in a cloud. "Every time I come here, I think you'll be gone," Max says.

"Then why do you come?"

His lips twitch. "You have my shadow."

She shakes her head, long past expecting any sense. "Fool."

"Max," he corrects mildly.

"Max," she apologizes, and then surprises herself by continuing. "Every time you go, I think you won't come back."

He draws one knee up to his chest, hand hanging loose over it. The other leg he stretches before him with a grunt of discomfort. "Why do you stay?"

"I made a promise." She looks at him, curious. "Why do you leave?"

"I broke one."

There's a roar of laughter from the gathering. For once, neither startles.

"Sleep," she suggests, because he looks tired. He has ghosts in his dreams, but here they don't seem to chill him so deep. He stretches beside her and when he starts to turn, she drops her hand to his shoulder and leaves it there.

-o-

Glory Be's hands wave in the dawn light, chubby little fingers clutching air. In a few moments she'll start to cry.

Furiosa will be long gone.

"We need you," Toast doesn't say, because it's untrue, and she swears truth with her skin and her words.

"We'll miss you," Cheedo doesn't say, because she doesn't admit defeat.

"Take as much water as you can," Capable said, earlier, but she's not here now. There's a glint of red in the heights of the Citadel; she's watching. A few more minutes and that hair would catch the sunrise like a guzzoline fire, but it disappears back into the shadows.

"You're going to die alone," the Dag says flat. "Dried up like a waster. We won't cry." There are streaks down her cheeks and her hands are clenched tight; she's too old to clutch at air.

"She won't die alone." Kalma rolls her bike closer, already packed for a long road. "Because she won't be alone."

Beyond her, Verdandi nears, pushing her own bike.

They three: last of the Vuvalini. The Many Mothers without a child between them.

"I'm not planning to die. And I didn't say you could come with me," Furiosa points out.

"Jo Bassa's child," Verdandi says crisply, as if she's agreeing with someone.

Kalma snorts. "Concannon's initiate," she reminds her.

"Mm, that."

Furiosa's thirteen again, scowling at her boots.

"Where are you going?" Toast asks, finally, ignoring Cheedo's glare.

"North-ways. Diamond Teena."

"Following Tin," the Dag groans. "There's no green there. It's a story for pups."

Kalma's hand hesitates over her packs like second thoughts, but moves again, pulling this, tightening that.

"You've found the green place," Cheedo pleads. "You're standing in it. Look up. Look down. There's life here."

It's not that she won't explain; it's that they won't understand. Can't understand. "Toast, what's the knowing?"

"The whole place is half-life," Toast spits, almost mutinously. "Word burger: ephemeral. I'm coming too," she adds.

No need of begging now; they've found new weapons.

So has she. "This is your home. Home is where they need you." She holds up her hand before words can tumble. "You do not need me."

"They don't need me either." Capable says, appearing behind Verdandi; she's already packed.

"Or me," Cheedo says. "The mothers will keep the Bullet Farm dancing well enough and the Dag can tend the botanicals."

"Or me." Toast crosses her arms. "But the history does."

"We carried them on the salt well enough," Kalma says, evenly, when Furiosa's mouth hangs open a tick too long without words.

A few minutes ago, she wasn't taking them either; Furiosa picks the fights she can win. "Capable or Cheedo – not both. They need your stitches. Decide yourselves."

In the face of Capable's steady stare, Cheedo frowns, but ducks her head. "Then I stay. What do we tell him when he comes looking for you?"

The Dag rolls her eyes at Furiosa's blank expression. "You think we didn't know about him sneaking in? Could've used the door; Slank almost skewered him last time. Right through."

"Tell him." She runs a hand over her bags. "Tell him I packed his shadow."


End file.
